


Under the Burning Sun

by Adanska



Series: built on a history of scars [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adanska/pseuds/Adanska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Batarians attacked her home, she’d stayed behind to give the others a chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Burning Sun

When the Batarians attacked her home, she’d stayed behind to give the others a chance. Her knee was wrecked, shattered from a bad fall trying to get Ginny out of the range of fire (she’d failed, little Ginny going up in flames and she went down, and the pain barely felt like penance), and it made more sense for her brother to take what cousins were left and run for the bunkers than to drag her along with. “Go!” she’d told him, “Come back for me later!”

She had a shotgun and a ration pack in the hole with her, enough to hold her over until help came (although, she wasn’t expecting any and Conor knew it). Clutched in her hands like a lifeline was the shitty coms their parents had used on the fields, the used up ones her and the cousins stole for their games.

“ _Almost there_ ,” said the com, a bare whisper of crackle. “ _Give me a few minutes to get them locked in, and I’ll come back for you Kris._ ”

“Take your time,” she rasped, hand clenching on the gun with her. “Con...”

“ _I’ll be back for you,_ ” he swore, a sibling’s promise, but she could see the ships on the horizon and knew how empty that promise would be. Years later, it’s this moment that sticks with her, the moment before she drags herself out of the ditch and into the warrens, the moment before she hears the discharge of a weapon over the coms and hears her family _screaming_ before the com drops (before _Con_ drops), and she never finds out what happens to the rest but she sure as shit knows what happened to her brother.

Buckling the rations over her back, using the gun like a cane, she hobbled to the warren holes, determined to make it to her family; she crawled through ten kilometres of broken and narrow tunnels, almost dying again and again from cave ins and pitfalls, but she made it to the bunkers, she made it to her brother, and she readied her gun and kept vigil over his ruined corpse until Alliance soldiers took her away.

(Years later, she would be the only survivor of a mission gone wrong, her entire squad getting killed in twos and threes by a beast that came from the ground, and she would survive and make it to the rendezvous point with a fistful of the tags she could save and a torso ravaged from shrapnel and narrow tunnels, and all she would be able to smell for weeks is the grass on Mindoir under the burning sun.)


End file.
